End of the Line

By ChocolateEclar

Disclaimer: I do not own A Madness of Angels or The Midnight Mayor. Those are the creations of the wonderful Kate Griffin, aka Catherine Webb.

A/N: I've been working on this pretty much since I finished The Midnight Mayor and I finally decided that perhaps I should be done with it since The Neon Court, book 3, is coming out in less than a month in the UK and about 2 months in the US. Please enjoy.

Prelude: The Neon Court

In which a warning is issued and ignored and even icy silences cannot ruin one's appetite for blueberry scones.

Nothing ever seems to begin gradually for us. It's wham-bam, thanking you kindly, but you are about to have a hell of a time. No warning. No how-do-you-do's.

One moment, we were walking down the pavement and licking sweet sticky soy sauce off of our fingers from an egg roll and then we stumbled into a big man in an expensive black suit.

I thought perhaps he was an Alderman, but no, he had more of a sense of humour than one normally found in them. He grinned down at me and said, "The Lady wants to see you, milord."

He was impossibly wide and had the kind of steroid-induced bulk in the shoulders that made me step back instinctively. "I suspect you're looking for a different – " I said.

"You be blue electric angels. The telephone interference that is called the Midnight Mayor?" He sounded bored. It offended us just a little.

We had learned that denial rarely worked. I held up my scarred hand. "Guilty, but who – "

"The Lady of the Buzzing Light in the Night-time, the Woman of the Light that Switches on at Dusk, the – "

"Lady Neon?" I asked tiredly.

He nodded his big block of a head and I sighed. "I suppose I don't have a choice."

"Nah."

He took me by the shoulder and dragged me towards the darkened pub across the road. The neon sign flickered into life, illuminating only partial words. Even the Neon Court wasn't immune from the curse of all such signs. In fact, they delighted in leaving messages in half-burnt-out signs.

I was pushed through the front door into the darkness of a space that smelled of gin and whiskey and smoke and buzzed with electricity. Even at five in the afternoon, the court was preparing for nightly excitement.

One shimmery girl parted from the rest of the flutter and twist of bodies and stepped up to me. "Hullo," she shouted over the pounding music. "The Lady herself ain't actually 'ere, but she tol' me to tell you to tell your la'y friend to buzz off like." She swept a hand through her hair – a mass of wires of every colour – and smiled. "I'm Neena, by the 'ay."

"Lady friend?" I repeated. "Penny?" If my apprentice was playing around with the Neon Court, then there was going to be hell to pay.

"Not that one," she said and leaned so close I could feel the static on her skin. Our electric blueness reflected in her eyes. "The one with the blood on her hands."

Oh. That lady friend.

I stood on London Bridge and thought.

"Penny for your thoughts?" someone asked over my shoulder.

"Hello, sorceress," I said.

Penny stepped up beside me and leaned over the side of the bridge with her hands clasped. "Why the long face, sorcerer?" she asked.

"The usual. Foreboding. Eminent doom. End of the line."

"Oh, that sort of thing. Do you suppose you could put that off for another week or so?"

"Probably not," I said. "Why?"

"I've… I've just met someone and I'd like to at least give it a go before the apocalypse gets in the way."

"Sorry."

"What seems to be the trouble this time?"

"Neon Court is in a foul mood." I rested my elbows on the railing and my head on my palms.

"Wonderful. I hope you weren't playing silly buggers with them."

"Not me."

Penny turned around so that she faced the wind, setting her braids flapping. "By your increasingly grave expression I would say it's Oda who has done something."

"I have an Oda-has-done-something expression?"

"You do, actually. It didn't take me three years to notice, if you're wondering. It involves any mention of her as well."

We were so taken aback by this information that we stood there in silence for about a minute. "Good to know," I said finally and heard Penny smile. "I'm contemplating what to say to her after these last three years. Something like 'Hullo. It's been a while. Have you or the Order been poking around the Neon Court lately by any chance? I think you'd better shove off or things will get nasty really quite quickly.'"

"I've only met your Oda once, but somehow I don't think that warning is going to suffice," Penny noted and I watched her beam her smile at a passing motorist who was making a rude gesture at several jeering teenage boys.

"It's worth a shot."

"I suppose. What's the worst – "

"Don't say it!"

"Sorry."

First Interlude: The Sorcerer's Apprentice and the Assassin

In which the sorcerer's apprentice has an encounter with a curious magician-killer and things somehow do not end in death and destruction.

This is how Penny met Oda, or, at least this is what Penny told me much, much later.

Penny Ngwenya was a young woman, newly trained in looking at things for magical potential, and pleased to find her life taking this new direction. Of course, the Aldermen were a constant bother, as if they were sure she would explode at any moment, taking half of the city with her, and she knew that they argued with me about this every chance they could.

The Order and the Aldermen were naturally in perfect agreement over this and so a representative was sent. Sinclair came to visit me one morning while I was sitting on the pavement and playing cards with a street urchin. The boy had beaten me soundly out of my gloves and shoes and was on his way to my coat, but we were determined to win everything back.

"Matthew, a word?" Sinclair had asked in the sort of tone schoolmasters use when they are about to tell you that they know you've been copying someone else's work and you had better stop or There Will be Consequences. "Concerned citizen" or not, things had to be quite serious for Dudley Sinclair to sound so concerned.

So I slipped into an alley, and it was no surprise at all to see Charlie leaning against the bricks. "Why, all things considered, you look well, Matthew," Sinclair said.

I shrugged.

"I know you are a very smart young man, so of course you know why I'm here."

"Penny."

"Yes, Ms Ngwenya is a bit of a concern to all parties involved, you understand."

"And yet I'm still going to train her. You can't just shove her off to Scotland or some other blasted place without any sort of knowledge and not expect that to end badly. That would be like saying, 'Here's this bomb. We don't feel like defusing it so we're going to leave it with you. Maybe you ought to throw it in the ocean.'"

"I do see your point, but – "

"Good, then that settles it." I moved to exit the alley and heard a faint growl from Charlie.

"Matthew," said Sinclair apologetically, "as Midnight Mayor, you should understand the dangers to this city very well. She cannot remain here."

"She can and she will because I am the Midnight Mayor," I said tightly.

"I see. Well, keep your enemies close and all that."

"She's isn't our enemy."

"We will be watching, Matthew."

"Good. You can expand my watchdog Oda's duties to my apprentice."

In retrospect, probably not the best choice of words.

Three months into her training and things were looking up for Penny. Or they were because the Aldermen seemed less inclined to shove her off a platform or roast her alive or stab out her eyeballs and make it all look like an accident. On one particular day, she was walking down the underground tunnel between the Angel and Old Street stations. The City Road station was somewhere in between, a station closed in the 1920s because of its uselessness, and I, in my infinite wisdom, had sent Penny down below to discover the magic of the closed tube station.

Armed with a torch and a bagel, Penny stood shivering and wondered why she couldn't have just broken in from the old City Road entrance instead of sneaking around the tunnels. "Bugger and blast," she grunted and sat down in a grimy slot in the wall to pause and eat her bagel.

A rat, nose keenly aware of the intruder's snack, perched on the stone beside her and squeaked. Penny broke off a piece and tossed it over. When the rat had munched away at this treat, she switched to its eyes and sent it skittering down the tunnel.

A train passed and the wind disturbed a strange scent up ahead. Penny urged the rat forward to investigate and found herself viewing what seemed to the rat to be a large pair of boots attached to human legs and up towards a torso encased in a leather jacket.

Penny released the rat and went off in search of this mysterious stranger. She kept close to shadows, keeping her torch pointed down and her finger ready to turn it off at any moment.

When the moment arrived, she was wholly unprepared. A hand reached out and struck the torch out of her hand and shoved her against the wall of the tunnel with a gun positioned under her chin.

Penny struggled for a moment, instincts taking over, and then promptly gave up when the person struck her upside the head with the palm of her hand. The fallen torch gave her an unexpectedly good view of her attacker, a woman with a burn above one of her eyes and only a faint fuzz of hair on her head.

"You're Oda," Penny said.

"And you're Penny Ngwenya. How do you know me, sorceress?"

"Matthew," Penny said. "He told me about you, when you visited him in hospital."

Oda gave my apprentice a cruel smile that twisted her lips mockingly. "And what did the sorcerer say?"

It was Penny's turn to smile, wholly different than Oda's malicious one that promised a nasty end. "Very little, which says a lot. He regrets things said and unsaid. I suspect that he is waiting for your bullet in his back."

"I would not give Matthew the out of not seeing his end anymore," Oda said.

"You would shoot him in the front? You know there's that saying that goes something like, 'Enemies stab you in the back. Friends stab you in the front.'"

Oda jerked the gun tighter against Penny's throat until it hurt and she gasped. "Friendship is not what I would use to describe our association. Now tell me why I should not shoot you here all alone in this tunnel where no one will find your body until it has been picked clean by the rats."

Penny gulped. "I understand that not knowing isn't the greatest excuse for what I did," she explained, "that being ignorant probably doesn't acquit me in the eyes of righteous nut jobs such as yourself, but I bet you won't shoot me because you and Matthew worked so hard to give me back my hat that shooting me would make it all seem rather pointless."

For a moment, Oda did nothing and Penny grimaced and nearly shut her eyes at the bullet she was sure was coming.

And then Oda released her and stepped back into the shadows. She asked, "What are you doing down here, sorceress?"

Penny stood in shock for a moment before answering. "Matthew has decreed – " She paused to chuckle, as if I could possibly boss her around. " – That my latest lesson is to learn the more obscure magic of the tube. I'm to find the closed City Road station, but it's being illusive. I've been down here for three hours."

"City Road is just around the corner behind me," Oda said.

"Oh, you'd be surprised. I'm sure it was when you passed it, but it probably isn't any more. That's the thing about closed stations. They like to jump around the tunnels and pretend to be useful. I suppose they miss the passengers."

"I should have killed you."

"I suppose that you'll simply have to deal with that regret then."

"Tell Matthew that I am still watching."

"Oda, I can assure you that he knows that already."

There was no reply in the dark, so Penny picked up her torch and turned the corner. Of course, City Road wasn't there.

Another day. Another day standing at a bus stop when the cool barrel of a gun was suddenly pressed against the back of my skull.

"Oda," I breathed as she whispered, "Bang."

"We missed you too," we said.

"I told you I would kill you," she said.

"Um, yes, but I haven't done anything you would deem too Satanic lately. There was that incident about three years ago when the Aldermen and the Order got all out of sorts because I took Penny on as an apprentice, but that's turned out all right now, hasn't it? Also, have you or the Order been poking around the Neon Court lately by any chance?"

She pressed the gun more firmly against my head. "What do you know about it?"

"Very little," I said and felt her fingers coolly press into my left shoulder to keep me from jerking away. "Am I familiar with the Neon Court? Of course. Lady Neon left a message for me about how you should essentially bugger off."

Her fingers curved and her nails dug into my skin just a little. "And why would she leave the message with you, sorcerer?"

"How should I know? My charming personality? My status as chosen protector of the city? My previous interactions with you? If it's the latter, then, really, you have only yourself to blame."

"You are coming with me," she ordered and the gun left my head to nudge me in the back.

"Why?"

"You are taking me to the Neon Court."

"I'm pretty sure that's counterproductive," I said, although I started to walk down the pavement with her. It wasn't like I had a choice. Resisting her tended to be like resisting a landslide.

I glanced to the side to see that three years had changed her. Her hair, which had been burnt away the last time I had seen her, was present again, but it was now in short little unbraided ringlets that curled tight against her skull. Much of the red burns I had seen on her face were gone, although there was a pinkish patch above her eye and spreading faintly into her eyebrow. The tail end of one thin eyebrow was missing, perhaps permanently burnt away at the wingtip. (I wanted to ask if the Order had as good a health plan as they did a dentistry one, but bit my tongue instead.) However, there were other changes that could not be explained by our encounter with Mr. Pinner, like the thin scars along her throat. There were four of them running parallel like the claws or talons of some beast had attempted to slash her skin into ribbons.

When she said nothing for several minutes, I said, "We should stop for supplies," and went into the nearest little spot for tea. After we ordered the biggest blueberry scone for sale, Oda sat tensely across from us as if our very presence offended her.

"So how's the Order?" I asked, cheerfully expecting no response and receiving none. "Been smiting the wicked and all that?"

Oda gave me a long, bland look and then stared out the window. I sighed.

Two scones later, she asked, "What are we waiting for this time?"

"You can't expect to reach the Neon Court during the day," I said. "We need to at least wait until sundown if you anticipate finding it at all."

"Of course," she said tersely and returned her stare to the people milling about outside the window. We watched with some curiosity as she jumped at the tinkling bell above the front door and then later the sound of a chair being pushed back and scrapping against the wooden floor.

Not long before dusk, after two hours of tense silence, my mobile rang and her hand flew to her jacket pocket and flexed around the hidden weapon. I answered my phone without looking at the number and ignored the threatening look she aimed at me. "Swift."

"Matthew, I thought we were – " Penny began.

"Can't. I ran into a bit of a problem."

"Problem? Like what? Like you've got stomach cramps or like you're lying in a ditch somewhere bleeding out of every orifice?"

"Somewhere in the middle," I said.

"So far anyway, you mean," she said. "I could – "

"No," I cut her off and watched out of the corner of my eye as Oda looked sharply at me. "No," I said more softly. "Just stay inside after dark for a bit."

"The Neon Court?"

"Yes."

"You're such a prat."

"Thanks."

She sighed. Penny had a sigh that reminded me of my mother and made me wonder sometimes who was teaching whom. It was two parts exasperated, one part acquiescent, and three parts affectionate.

"I'll keep alert for news of your body being discovered in an alleyway beside a nightclub," she said.

"Hey, I have a faithful companion."

She snorted. "Oh yeah? Faithful in the religious sense, I'm sure. You're playing with bullets and hellfire, Matthew."

"Yeah, thanks. I got that."

There was another sigh and then she hung up. I snapped my mobile closed and slipped it back in my pocket. When I serenely folded my hands in my lap and gazed at my companion, she was studying me as if I'd been chatting about orgies and ritualistic murder.

I thought she was going to ask about the phone conversation, but I suppose I was just overestimating her capacity to give a damn. Instead, she asked, "Have we wasted enough time yet?"

I studied the expanding darkness in the sky and the lengthening shadows on the pavement, hiding deeper secrets around corners. Across the street, a neon sign flickered into life like some ridiculous goddamn Sign. Whether it was a good or bad Sign remained to be seen, but knowing my track record, the former seemed unlikely.

"Would it make a difference if I pointed out that Lady Neon is not someone you muck about with?"

"You know the answer to that."

I nodded and followed her out.

I led us to the nearest club, the sort of place that, despite the energy and life, made me feel terribly tired just looking at it. The pulsing beat reached us outside, a constant drumming that roared over the screams of ecstasy inside and reminded us sickeningly of Voltage and Boom Boom. The bouncer at the door of Elfame was busy checking the ID of some mousy little girl in a halter top who could be no older than sixteen. Her rail thin arms were poised on her nonexistent hips as if that would give her another few years.

"You're truly twenty-one?" the bouncer asked, as he eyed the ID.

"Yeah, 'course. Just had my birthday."

"Will you give tribute to this nightclub?"

"What?"

"How about five years of your life so you can be old enough? That sounds fair."

"Oh hell," I said, remembering the disastrous Black Cab ride, as Oda said, "He's serious, isn't he?"

I politely shoved the girl away from the door and said in a conversational tone, "Now, now, shouldn't you be at home, doing your maths schoolwork or something?"

"Hey!" she squeaked, hugging herself now and rocking on her platform shoes. "What's your deal? I'm not – "

"Old enough to drive a car? Yeah, we know. Now just –

"I just wanna – "

"What you want to do is go home and not lose five years of your existence," we said and she backed away as if we were raving mad. Not so far from the truth really.

"Fuck you," she hissed and wobbled away, clutching her fake ID to her chest.

"She'll only wander to another club and the result will be the same," the bouncer pointed out and grinned, displaying teeth that were as small and pointed as a shark's. "All clubs are ours."

"Yeah, but not all of them are manned by you," I pointed out.

He shrugged. "My cousin is in charge of the door of one a street over," he said. "He won't let her go so easily."

I gritted my teeth and counted to ten before speaking. "Let's get this over with, shall we?" I asked and sneered.

He squared his big shoulders and looked down at me with scorn. "You will be in the presence of royalty, mayor," he explained. "I suggest you lose the little boy's pretence of Being a Tough Guy and give in to any urge to wet your pants. That way the lady doesn't chew you up and spit you out."

"I'll – " My throat went very dry and I had to clear it to keep from sounding prepubescent. "We'll consider it," we said finally.

The bouncer smirked and moved towards the black door set in the bricks and then paused. Oda had moved out of the shadows of the building into the light above the doorway. He looked straight at her and then laughed. "Oh, I wish I was inside for this."

Before I could ask about this cryptic statement, he was pushing us inside and the door was slamming shut with a bang that was greatly muffled by the sounds of the club within. On reflex, I clutched my ears at the pounding of the bass in the walls. I was pleased to see speakers hidden in the dark rolls of sheer fabric flowing from the walls instead of mysterious music popping out of nowhere.

Music, if you could call the cacophony that. It was so intense that the lyrics were unintelligible and screaming down as a reminder that, as a member of the population that was over thirty, I was not supposed to understand the thrill. I grimaced and searched through the undulating bodies in tight outfits (leather was prominent which made us wonder about the chaffing) and the flickering coloured lights for something that suggested the royalty of the nightlife.

Oda let out a small, annoyed noise. I followed where she was looking to see two petite women twirling around together with their hair gleaming like wire and their eyes flashing with the pale luminescence that comes from a black light shined on a white shirt.

"Huh," I said, not taking my eyes off those two. "You're getting better at spotting mystic bleeding forces. I'm surprised."

She grunted.

I smiled, had to smother a chuckle so she didn't see my wry facial expression, and brushed past her in the direction of the bright Neon Court girls.

As we approached, one of the girls grinned at me with glowing white teeth and grabbed my wrist, dragging me forward. "Dance with us, sorcerer," she said slyly.

The other girl, who I suspected, despite how they both looked exactly alike, might be the vapid Neena I had met before, chirped, "Yeah, like. It's imperative."

She snatched up my other wrist. The electricity sizzling along their skin reacted with our blue electric fire and zapped at them. The Neon Girls jerked back with their skin glowing reddish orange and buzzing faintly.

"Nee, Nobe," a woman purred. "You mustn't play with the sorcerer." Out of the chaos of bodies, Lady Neon emerged. Her eyes glowed with the light of the neon signs, a reddish orange much brighter than the Girls' skin and hangover-painful to look at. Her wiry hair was long and piled up on top of her head in a bird's nest and her nails were tiny, bright white LED lights. Where the Neon Girls wore leather and metal bits, Lady Neon was painted into a skin-tight silver dress that barely brushed mid-thigh. Below, miles and miles of orange skin trailed down to four inch stilettos.

She gave me a very sharp-toothed grin, filled with all sorts of after-dark promises, and said, "Why don't we go somewhere more private?"

Oda stepped forward and said, "I think we can talk right here. I have only one thing to say to you."

The look that Lady Neon gave Oda was something a lot less pleasurable and a lot more dangerous. "Let me speak for you, girl." She said it like a verbal roll of her eyes, full of contempt. "Your Order has attacked me. Shutting down my establishments with permit violations and other bureaucratic nightmares. While that is much more intelligent than using a gun or some holy water, you have given me the right to retaliate and I will do so if you don't stop."

"You already – " Oda said.

"No, I have not retaliated against the Order. Yet."

"Lies." The venom in Oda's voice surprised the Neon Girls and me. A hush spread around the nightclub, as if they sensed a fight brewing like a circle of vultures. "That abomination that paces around me every night – "

"Why would I summon such a creature when it would be so much easier to send a shadow in the night, courtesy of the lord of the lonely traveller who is at my beck and call, to silence you and your little group?"

"As if you could silence – "

"Don't go all righteous and holy on me, girl!" Lady Neon snarled and the lights buzzed and whined overhead and everyone on the dance floor watched. "You have spilled enough blood to fill the Thames!" She calmed and that switch in emotion, as sudden and volatile as a chemical reaction, was more frightening. We suddenly wanted to run. "But I bet you've given Mr Swift here plenty of reasons to summon such a hellish phantom back from the depths."

All eyes on the sorcerer. "Oda," I asked, "what does she mean?"

"Ah, playing the innocent," Lady Neon said and hummed with laughter that spread throughout the club, her Court.

Oda didn't look at me, but her shoulders were set and angry as the Court jeered at her.

"Oda?" we whispered.

She whipped around to look me in the eyes and whispered, "When we walk out those doors, something is going to attack me. Will it attack you as well?"

I swallowed. "I didn't summon anything, so yes?"

A pause. Complete and utter silence lived and breathed in the room, while she debated with herself. "I guess we'll see," she said finally.

I very much doubted I was going to like this test.

A/N: Please read and review. Even if it's just to tell me I'm obviously an American writing about Brits.